Bill Ackman Is Out of His Element, man
Bill Ackman has spent 25 years blowing up companies, bonking on bike rides, and getting bageled by ATP players. The universe keeps returning the memo.
Bill Ackman is what happens when a hedge fund manager mistakes money for talent, and nobody in his life cares enough to explain the difference.
His thing is “activist investing” — Wall Street’s polished phrasing for buying a stake in a company, installing your guy, blowing the architecture apart, and clearing out while the employees figure out what happened to their retirement accounts. The Dude has seen this film. The rug doesn’t survive.
Exhibit A: JC Penney. Ackman built a $900 million position in 2010, forced out the CEO, and installed Ron Johnson — the Apple Stores architect — to drag a 111-year-old discount retailer into modernity by eliminating discounts. Sales dropped 25% in a single year. The company lost a billion dollars. Howard Schultz went on CNBC and said Ackman had “blood on his hands.” Ackman resigned from the board, sold at a loss, and blamed the lane conditions.
Then came Herbalife, where he shorted a billion dollars of stock on live television, declared the company a pyramid scheme, and watched Carl Icahn — a man who despises Ackman the way Walter despises the Nihilists — go long just for the pleasure of it. Icahn made a billion dollars on the trade. Ackman eventually covered with losses north of a billion. The Dude would’ve mixed himself a White Russian and called it Tuesday.
This is where the sports stories start pulling their weight. In 2013, Ackman joined a cycling ride in the Hamptons, blew past experienced riders at mile 20 like a man who had just discovered his true calling, and bonked so completely by mile 32 that he could barely finish. His mind wrote a check his legs couldn’t cash.
Last July, he finagled a wild card into the Hall of Fame Open — an actual ATP Challenger Tour event — partnered with Grand Slam champion Jack Sock, and got worked 6-1, 7-5 in 67 minutes. Andy Roddick called it “the biggest joke I’ve watched in professional tennis.” The Hall of Fame subsequently declined Ackman’s $10 million donation. A nonprofit. Said no. To ten million dollars. Because the humiliation was too expensive even for people who need money.
The pattern holds everywhere: find a room, insist you belong there, blow it up, blame the room.
Donny, you’re out of your element
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